Guilt, Work and Gaming

Even now, when I talk about gaming with peers, it’s almost a secretive, under-cover conversation. Because gaming is inherently not work.

When you think about one side, it’s true. Very true.

However, if we look at the coin and make it into a 20-sided die (maybe 24?), then things change. When we develop solutions for problems or needs, we create an application (or more than one) which provide that solution.

The creation of games is the same. Boiled down, it’s all 1’s and 0’s. What is a Clarion App? It’s a nice interface for entering data? What is a game? It’s a nice (very nice hopefully) interface for entering data.

The solution is to capture the data. The need is perhaps a little different. Business needs are for the making of money. A Gamer’s need is to play. Now, then you have the companies that want to make money out of gaming. Bam. The lines are joined together now. Gaming is a business. And, if the above article is correct, then most Business is gaming.

My thinking at the moment is … wait for it … developing business solutions is actually a subset to developing gaming solutions. Or at least, developing a gaming solution allows for a whole swag more materials to grapple with.

With a gaming solution, your mind get’s to travel off in crazy directions … but then … maybe that’s true for a business solution. Or at least, it should be. Google dared to dream of a day when they ruled the world through being the conduit rather than the content. Jesse James Garrett dreamt of coining a phrase, and Ajax was "born". A short time ago, in a galaxy like this one, a boy dreamed up a name … Dev Dawn … and the foundations of the world trembled at the power of the moment. Heh heh.

So maybe we need a change in understanding. To think outside the box, in whatever development we do. Whether that be putting in a new network, or writing the next best accounting package, or making a truly innovative next-gen your-head-will-explode-on-seeing-it game … we need to be able to dream.